Elsewhere / I Am A Camera
I Am A Camera
14 May 2011 at 7:30pmat Church Hill Theatre
by John van Druten
In the words of the The Herald Tribune, the play “looks at life in a tawdry Berlin rooming house of 1930 with a stringently photographic eye”.
For the most part, it concerns itself with the mercurial and irresponsible moods of a girl called Sally Bowles. When we first meet her, she is a creature of extravagant attitudes, given to parading her vices, enormously confident that she is going to take life in her stride. She is fond of describing herself as an “extraordinary interesting person”, and she is vaguely disturbing.
As we get to know her, as we watch her make frightened arrangements for an illegal operation, seize at the tinselled escape offered by a rich and worthless American playboy, attempt to rehabilitate herself and fail ludicrously, we are more and more moved, more and more caught up in the complete and almost unbearable reality of this girl. The author has placed a character named Mr Isherwood on the stage … he serves both as narrator and as principal confidante to Sally Bowles. He is the camera eye of the title, attracted to Sally, yet dispassionate about her.
Though Sally is the chief point of interest, the plight of the Jew in Germany in the early thirties is brought within focus in a few touching scenes.
The New York Post said – “Mr. van Druten has made a striking, intelligent and steadily arresting play … a both uproarious and poignant dramatization”.
The play is adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s book of short stories “Berlin Stories” and later, was the inspiration for the hit musical “Cabaret”.
PLEASE NOTE: This performance takes place at the Church Hill Theatre, Morningside Road, Edinburgh EH10 4DR
